


Their Dark Messiah

by peachBitch1



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Building trust, Canon Backstory, First Meetings, Gap Filler, Gen, Isolation, Making Friends, Male Friendship, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Necromancy, Non-Graphic Blood and Injury, Pre-Canon, Pre-Lisa’s death Dracula’s awesome, Sad boys meet a great father-figure, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27151705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachBitch1/pseuds/peachBitch1
Summary: This is an attempt to expand on Hector’s and Isaac’s backstories and to imagine how their first meetings with Dracula went. Pre-season 1 and canon-compliant.
Relationships: Dracula & Isaac Laforeze, Hector & Dracula (Castlevania)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. The Midnight Visitor

**Author's Note:**

> Title’s a quote from a forgehusband’s fic I really love “à quatre pattes” by havisham  
> Check it out if you haven’t 😋

There’s a knock on the door coming from outside and the pouring rain. It’s well pass midnight and thunder has been raging on for hours.

Hector, a necromancer living in the middle of uninhabited land, feels his heart hammer in his chest, despite the resignation that weighs his shoulders into a slump. Nothing good would come knocking on such a night.

Then again, nothing good would ever come looking for him anyway.

He sits up from the bench upon which the rotting corpse of a fox lays and straightens his spine as he walks to the rickety door of his shack. 

There’s no lock, he’s never needed for one, so far away from all settlements and with the reputation that he carries - no one has ever dared to try to rob his home. The door swings wide open on its creating hinges in a swift and decisive motion, revealing a dark figure standing tall and immovable in the cold rain. Scarce candle light does little to illuminate the stranger’s features, but even standing a few steps down from Hector’s floor, on the mud path underneath, the man before him towers over the young necromancer.

”Can I help you,” Hector doesn’t bother with courtesies. He already knows that whoever this man is, if he’s even a man, he’s come to the right place. Such were Hector’s only visitors - dark, dangerous entities, who didn’t flinch from the onslaught of the elements, nor did they shy away from the vicinity of a practitioner of Hector’s trade.

“I am looking for Hector,” the creature’s voice answered pleasantly in an accent that was too smooth to be native Greek. The lack of shivering in that calm, almost musical voice, coupled with the pale face that turned up to meet Hector’s searching gaze, only confirmed the necromancer’s suspicions. He was dealing with a vampire.

“You have found him,” he announced without fear, only slightly laboring to keep his curiosity at bay. As long as he was within the threshold of his house, he was safe of this uninvited guest. 

“My name is Vlad Dracula. I have travelled all the way from Transylvania to meet you. May I come in?”

Hector swallowed the lump in his throat with some difficulty. He knew the name of the most famous vampire of their age. That Dracula had come to meet him - a necromancer of insignificant renown was too arrogant to ever believe. However, Hector was willing to listen to the flattery, if only because he didn’t believe that any answer to the vampire’s polite request could still save his life. Dracula was known for his willies and his elaborate and vengeful ways to kill. If Hector had become a target of his fascination, there was nothing that would keep the apex predator from this lowly human’s neck. It was best for all parties involved if they kept things civil.

“Of course. Please come in,” Hector invited the monster into his house, trying to pretend that his heart wasn’t racing wildly in his chest. 

The vampire bowed and accepted the offer graciously, bending at the waist to pass the low threshold of Hector’s home. 

The prince of darkness stood just an inch shy from the ceiling of the room, which Hector occupied with everything from his sleeping arrangements to his macabre art. He ate and bathed in the same square chamber that he used to dissect animals and read entails for the few superstitious locals, who were still willing to go near to his place, in search of heavenly answers to their petty, mundane questions. 

Hector despised all humans the same - the ones who tossed coins at him, and the ones who threw rocks. 

But the man, who now occupied the centre of his poorly lit, and poorly furnished abode, was not a man at all, but a creature that captured Hector’s interests grately. 

Wearing the shapes of humans, but only superficially so, vampires walked a fine thread between life and death. Those beings that had somehow found a way to cheat death had always been one of Hector’s favorite research subjects and an object of his fascination. If only he discovered what sort of magic kept their cold bodies in a perfect imitation of life, then perhaps his craft could improve from its current state of reanimating only the smallest of critters - the ones to whom he could safely gift out a fraction of his own soul to restore theirs and return them to a bare facsimile of life. 

The vampire turned to face Hector. They weren’t standing close, however with his unnatural height, Dracula seemed to loom over the smaller man and the entirety of the room. 

“You know who I am, what I am,” Dracula’s eyes were dark wells that sucked out all light, without reflecting anything back. “I can sense that you fear me. Why did you invite me in?”

Hector let his deep inhale puff out his chest in a display of confidence that he didn’t quite possess.

“I don’t turn anyone away from my door,” the necromancer answered. The fact that no one came to his door without a shady job for him went without saying.

“And what a reputation that has gained you,” Dracula’s smile was a slow, fearsome thing. Hector stared transfixed at the glittering canines it revealed. His heart fluttered with animalistic terror, seeing those needle-like points, formed for the sole purpose of draining a human of their blood. Yet in his paralyzing fear that threatened to turn his knees to jelly, Hector also couldn’t help but think that the Prince of Darkness was an extremely handsome man. 

No wonder no human ever ran in horror from the vampire stalking them. The guise of the vampire was too beautiful for a mere mortal to resist its hypnotizing lure. 

As if aware of the effect he had, Dracula released him from his gaze, allowing the human to remember how to breathe.

“My reputation… so you have truly heard of me,” Hector let out a huff of nervous laughter. Perhaps he was off the menu, at least for the time being, and his guest had indeed sought him out with another strange assignment.

“Indeed. A necromancer of untamed raw magic, with no rigid moral code or teachings to limit him and stunt his growth to power,” the vampire elaborated, eyeing the room they inhabited. There was a single seat by the ritual table and the fox’s carcass, candles to illuminate every dim surface and little else. The vampire’s sweeping gaze didn’t hold any judgement, only intrigue.

“Most people use other words to describe me and what I do,” Hector answered carefully, stepping closer to a companionable distance from Dracula. Perhaps he was a total fool, put to ease by a few kind words thrown his way, or the vampire’s aura was working to enchant him, but Hector’s sense of unease was quickly vanishing.

At the arched raise of a dark eyebrow, Hector elaborated.

“They say that I am a cold, heartless bastard, and the work I do is faithless,” he exhaled an exasperated sigh. “Few think of what I do as a rise to greater knowledge or power. They frown upon the sources I stoop to using to gain understanding.”

“Into subjects too sacrilege to commit to any book… And the work you do with that forbidden knowledge,” Dracula trailed off with a note of mirth that caught Hector completely by surprise and extorted a small smile from him in return. 

“Consulting with ghosts, dessacrating ancient temples, digging up graves, placing curses, making pacts with demons…” Hector shrugged nonchalantly. “I suppose I can add hosting vampires to the long list of activities people hate me for.”

“You may indeed,” Dracula agreed pleasantly and waved casually as he summoned a high-back chair, so opulent in its qualities that a commoner wouldn’t have hesitated to call it a throne. The vampire took a fluid seat and crossed his long legs, his long-taloned fingers steeping together in a gesture of thoughtfulness. “Please take a seat,” he bid and after some hesitation, Hector pulled the narrow stool that served as his only chair a little closer to the giant that had so casually came and made himself comfortable in his small room.

“So, how can I be of service to you… lord Dracula?” The title was harder to utter than Hector had anticipated. Never in his life had he offered such formalities to a fellow human, no matter how much higher on the social ladder they stood. No human deserved respect from him, for he knew their follies intimately, and their made-up ranks were of little concern to him. If anything, Hector liked to parade his rudeness, his lack of refinement and their aversion only made him feel better. He didn’t want the acceptance of such lowly creatures as his fellow men.

But the being before him… Dracula was something else. The very air around him commanded Hector’s respect, and the few words they had exchanged so far gave off a veneer of refinement and a knife-sharp wit. Hector supposed that he could show this superior creature some measure of respect, if for nothing else, for the implicit ability to take Hector’s life at his leisure, without there being a single thing that the young necromancer could do to prevent it.

”Are you always so eager to do other people’s bidding,” Dracula asked, but there was no mockery behind it that Hector could sense. Only a strong kind of interest, as if the vampire was looking at a curiosity, rather than a simple man. The scruinity of Dracula’s sideways gaze made Hector self-conscious and he lowered his head, hiding behind his long locks, and picked and plucked at the loose threads of his too-short sleeves. He wished that he had prioritised finding a new tunic for himself - the current one he had outgrown years ago. Hector drove the thought of what the Prince of Darkness saw when he looked upon him forcefully out of his mind.

“I am always on the lookout for work, but interesting propositions rarely come my way,” he shrugged, unconsciously stooping forward in his seat and making himself smaller. He forced his spine to straighten back up as he commanded lightness in his tone, “I am usually only consulted in matters of lost treasures hidden by the dearly-deceased, or to pinpoint the location of a recent shipwreck. I was hoping that a vampire would have a more stimulating task for one such as me.”

“I'm sorry to disappoint, as I haven’t come here to demand work from you,” Dracula’s answer was confusing to Hector, who struggled to understand in the short beat before the vampire continued. “I came here with the sole purpose to meet you, and then I would be on my way.”

Hector leaned forward, unable to hide the surprise on his face.

“So you haven’t come to… kill me?”

Dracula chuckled darkly in response.

“I suppose we both have less than savoury reputations that precede us,” he smiled knowingly, letting those long pointy teeth show. “Let us start again, disregarding all that we may previously know of each other and conversing like friends. My name is Vlad, and I have set out on a trip from Wallacia over the wide world in search of understanding the hearts of mankind. As I passed a port town in Crete, I heard a rumour about a necromancer of exceedingly young age, who has journeyed into that dark art unguided, with only demons as his teachers. Needless to say, I decided to come meet this rarity of a man for myself.”

Hector gaped speechless. Dracula, the Prince of Darkness in the flesh, had come to meet with him, humble old Hector, an orphan and a reject… 

He gathered himself faster than he would have given himself credit for.

“It’s my pleasure to meet you, Lord Vlad Dracula,” he extended his hand and when his fingers clasped the marble-like flesh of the vampire before him, Hector felt in the depths of his cold heart that he meant every last bit of the respect that the title implied. “My name is Hector… just Hector. It would be my honour to converse with you as a friend.”

…


	2. The Mysterious Savior

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to Moonstonemama for beta-reading this one 💖💖💖

There is a point, when death draws so near that all sensations - pain, cold, thirst… they peel away from a man’s skin, leaving his body blissfully numb. The deafening pounding of his desperate heart drowns out the noise of the crude bandit camp, but that too slowly recedes into nothing but a monotonous buzz.

That is the point at which Isaac finds himself - staring up into a myriad of stars over a cloudless midnight sky. Their twinkling lights are but a blur, much like the fine grains of sand that dance up into the air, carried by the light breeze. The arcanist smiles slightly. It won’t be long.

Days have passed since he was kidnapped and dragged out into the desert. How many - Isaac has lost count. Vaguely his mind recalls endless hours of torment as he was beaten and tortured for his captors’ sick entertainment, while they denied him food and water, putting his endurance to the test, and driving him closer and closer to the final edge. 

He is close to the end. He knows it. They don’t know it, because they are ignorant, sadistic pigs, and Isaac has been hiding it well. He wants to laugh, because a corpse won’t be any good to them, when the organs are only believed to have magical powers while fresh. He would laugh, but he hasn’t got the strength to draw more than a rattling breath.

A shadow passes over him and Isaac makes a conscious effort to focus his eyes enough to make out whom it belongs to. Perhaps his eyes are lying to him, because the face he sees isn’t one that he has learned to despise in the short time he has spent at his captors’ mercy. 

It’s a pale face, whiter than the moon that cast its shy rays to illuminate it. The eyes that glower down at him are red and the mouth… oh, the mouth is painted like a woman’s in the deepest crimson colour that only blood possesses, and the teeth… those teeth are large and pointed, dripping hot liquid the same hue as the one that stains the stranger’s tongue.

Isaac smiles contently. A vampire. A vampire has raided the camp.

So that’s how Isaac’s suffering would finally draw to an end, and his life would be avenged. For there is no mistaking it now - the voices of the bandits have forever been swallowed by the night, and he is the only one left alive. 

“I have killed for centuries, yet no one, not even a single soul, amongst the thousands I’ve slaughtered has ever graced me with such a radiant smile before their end, ” the vampire utters. Perhaps Isaac is delirious, but the creature’s voice sounds full of fascination. “Why do you smile at me so, child?” 

Isaac doesn’t remember the last one someone called him a child. When he was small he was either ‘servant’ or ‘that boy’. However, the odd diminutive doesn’t surprise him as much as the civil tone in which it was spoken. The vampire addressed him more like an equal than any of the humans that Isaac has ever met.

“I smile for you are death, and I’ve awaited your embrace for a long time.” Isaac’s tone is almost as dry as his chapped lips. It’s more of a snake’s hiss, the susurrus of the ever-shifting sand than a sound that a human throat should make.

“You don’t fear death,” the vampire asks incredulously. The image of his pale face is too blurred to distinguish any features. Isaac can barely keep his eyes open for another second.

“No. It always sounded peaceful to me,” he sighs and allows his lids to finally close. He is exhausted. Perhaps it is time for him to rest… 

Yes, death sounds so peaceful and peace is all Isaac has ever longed for, in his short but turbulent life… Darkness swallows him and he hopes that this is the end.

…

Until he awakes again, this time in a bed, and his body is so desperately holding onto life that every bruised muscle, every torn laceration, every broken bone burns with the intensity of a roaring bonfire. 

He can’t return to the soothing non existence of unconsciousness. His flesh is shivering, even as it burns and sweat pours from every pore, drenching sheets and pillows in salty dampness that only aggravates him further.

Isaac tosses, startles when he feels his legs immobilised. His panic increases even after he realises that he’s only tangled in the sheets.

He doesn’t recognize this room. He can’t identify this place. Who has captured him and for what nefarious purpose? His fever only makes the panic more poignant.

An icy hand touches his brow and Isaac’s eyes fall closed in instinctual relief. A wet cloth replaces it and Isaac can’t contain the sigh that escapes him as the burning is eased by the cool sensation.

“You are safe. Rest,” a vaguely familiar, strangely hypnotic voice soothes him. Isaac finds it eerily easy to heed its commands. 

He is asleep again before he knows it.

…

Isaac awakes in the stark room alone. The first thing his eyes land on is a pitcher of water and a plate of sugary fruit - figs, dates and raisins, all waiting by his side. The arcanist is too thirsty to fear for poison in his drink. His throat is parched and his lips bleed at the simple action of opening his mouth. He drinks deeply like a camel - with greedy gulps that leave him feeling mildly sick.

For a while all he can do is lie back and rest, as his stomach churns and twists, trying to decide if it will be rejecting the water after such a long period of dehydration. 

Thankfully it decides to keep the liquid down, and soon Isaac feels recovered enough to reach for the fruits with a little more caution. As he pops one vitamin-rich berry into his mouth, his eyes scan the small room. It’s unfurnished, save for the cot on which he reclines and the table drawn up beside it. The walls are stacked mud brick with only a narrow hole through which hot sun rays illuminate the floor. The door is nothing more than an arch that leads to a featureless corridor. Outside Isaac can hear the hustle and bustle of a human settlement.

Curiously, the young man lifts the thin sheet that covers his body and discovers that all of his wounds have been bandaged and tended to. He is wearing only a clean loincloth, a discovery that makes his cheeks flush in self-conscious embarrassment. Did the pale-faced man do that for him? Was he truly a vampire, or had Isaac’s mind played tricks on him in that weakened state? A vampire wouldn’t have left him as anything other than a cooling corpse in the desert, so that left only one rational option - Isaac’s savior was a man.

Saving someone is one thing, going through the trouble of bandaging and cleaning them seems… intimate somehow. Isaac’s heart tightens in dismay. He doesn’t want to think about what that means. 

Sitting up and slowly rising to unsteady feet, Isaac makes his way into the corridor, trembling hands gripping the wall for support. His muscles shudder and he can barely find the energy to stand without panting, but he needs to find out whose house he has found himself imprisoned in. Upon ascending a staircase, Isaac enters a richly decorated parlour, filled with colourful carpets and tasseled pillows, low hanging baldachins, sweet scented flowers, and more women than Isaac has ever seen in one place. Some of them glance at him from the corners of their kohl-lined eyes, or smile beneath translucent veils that do nothing to preserve their modesty. Isaac avoids their playful attention, quickly realising that these brightly painted women are courtesans, and that his recovery room is in fact located not in someone’s house but in the storage level of a brothel.

This poses more questions than it answers, so Isaac approaches the hostess- a woman in her fifties, who somehow still retains her beauty, despite age and the difficulties of her professions.

“I would like to speak to the one who brought me here,” Isaac demands.

“Your patron is resting, and he would not be desturbed before sundown,” she answers, her smile odd and mysterious. “To meet with him all you have to do is wait in the room he rented for you. He will come, I can assure you. He always visits you after night fall.”

Isaac refrains from asking how long is ‘always’ - a day, a week? He has no recollection of the time that passed.

“Do you need company,” the hostess prods knowingly. “Your patron has ordered us to cater to your every need, and he pays us well to do so. I would like to make certain that you enjoy your stay.”

The woman’s gaze lowers to Isaac’s body not too subtly, lingering on the loincloth that’s the only piece of garment he still possesses.

“No, you don’t have anyone to my taste,” Isaac answers bluntly. The hostess shrugs in response. “But I would use your services to acquire some clothes for me, if that is something you could do?”

“Well, certainly,” her painted lips stretch into a grin.

…

By sunset Isaac is sitting on the edge of the bed, clothed in a simple linen robe and trousers, awaiting the arrival of the man who saved him.

No later than the last rays of the sun disappear behind the horizon a long shadow comes creeping across the lamplight of the corridor. Isaac keeps his eyes soft, fixed on the arched entrance. His posture is ramrod straight, despite the wounds that still pain him. 

A monstrously tall silhouette stops by the entrance of his room. It completely obscures the exit, blocking out all light from the corridor lamp. Instinct makes Isaac’s heart pick up its calm pace.

“For a man who doesn’t fear death, you cling to life by the skin of your teeth,” a velvety voice with a slight Eastern European accent speaks in Arabic to him. 

Isaac knows Latin and many other European languages, but he appreciates the foreigner’s gesture. However, it’s not the man’s knowledge of Arabian language that makes Isaac’s skin prickle. The silhouette standing at his door has brought a chill with it, which rolls over Isaac in waves, stealing his warmth without the need of a touch. The eyes that fix him with their hypnotic weight glitter red in the dark, like garnets, or perhaps more like drops of blood.

“Death rejected my offer to be taken into his arms,” Isaac answers thoughtfully, the shiver in his spine and the quickening in his heart evidence enough that he hadn’t been wrong in his initial assumptions after all. His savior is not human. 

How fitting that one as hated by people as much as Isaac, would be saved by humanity’s most reviled monster.

“If he wills it, he can still take what is his due,” Isaac adds, tilting his head to the side to expose his neck to the vampire.

The dark glow of those garnets shimmers just a bit, but they remain fixed on Isaac’s eyes.

“Perhaps in time, if your death wish remains as strong as it is now, I might grant your request,” the vampire divulges. He steps forward, bending to cross the low archway and as he enters the small room the light from the lamp rolls off his black cloak and even darker curls, revealing an aristocratic face. Something softens in the sharp angles of those narrow features and the vampire summons a chair to sit right across from Isaac, leaning forward until they are at eye level.

“But I’d rather get to know the man whose life I preserved after carelessly extinguishing countless others,” the vampire admits. “That is, if he’d let me.”

Disbelief bubbles inside Isaac. He has expected many things to be demanded of him, some of which too terrible to ever consider surrendering of his own free will. However, this is not one of them. No one has ever wanted to get to know him. After his life of isolation, rejected by general society and his mentors, a vampire making this request of him seems borderline absurd.

“May I ask what sparked this uncommon interest, Mr Vampire,” Isaac deflects with a sharp smirk.

“Count, actually,” the vampire raises an amused eyebrow, “Count Vlad Tepes Dracula. Although, I prefer Vlad.”

“Isaac,” the arcanist introduces himself, trying to hide his awe at the realisation of just who has saved him. 

Naturally Isaac has heard of the bloodthirsty and fearsome vampire lord who’s been terrorising Wallacia for centuries. The Prince of Darkness, who possesses magic and knowledge unheard of, the sort Isaac dreams of. 

To be rescued by him, to have become the subject of his interest… That is an honour Isaac had never anticipated. 

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Count Dracula,” Isaac recovers, and he means every word. “I am an admirer of your achievements and the sciences that you have developed. For years I have dreamt of meeting a man such as yourself, if only to bask in their illuminated presence.”

“Are you a seeker of knowledge yourself, Isaac,” Dracula asks and there is no mockery in his tone, only genuine intrigue - something that Isaac appreciates.

“A sufi loremaster and an arcanist,” Isaac admits humbly. If Count Dracula is all that Isaac believes him to be, then Isaac will divulge more about the maccable arts that have recently become the subject of his fascination. But it doesn’t pay off to be too eager to spill one's guts out in front of a stranger, so Isaac divulges no more for the time being.

“Is that so,” Count Dracula’s lips tilt up in a smile. It looked warm and content, fully at odds with the reputation that precedes the legendary vampire. Isaac marvels to gaze upon it. As strange as it is, the word that circles in his mind to describe it is charming, rather than vicious or intimating. “In that case, this acquaintance might be fruitful for us both, Isaac.”

“I am hopeful that it will be so,” Isaac smiles and for once, there are no sharp edges in the corners of his lips.

…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next two chapters will update a little slower, because they haven’t been written yet. There we’ll explore each forgemaster through Dracula’s POV.

**Author's Note:**

> Up next: Dracula’s journey south takes him to Isaac


End file.
